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Hi Grant,
I think to engage people interested in the science side of astronomy you have to be where the largest numbers who might be interested can be found which is in the astro forums and the profile of the BAA is very low there.
I spend a lot of time out there in various groups engaging with people interested in spectroscopy, promoting spectroscopy, showing examples and helping them. While most of it is in the science sections of general astro groups or special interest groups (If you look at what is going on in the Cloudy Nights Scientific Amateur Astronomy subforum for example, there is some interesting stuff going on there), I also drop in on the “pretty picture” imagers from time to time to give a science view of what is in their images, show them a spectrum, explain why light leaks in their filters is turning the red stars in their narrow band filtered images into planetary nebulae etc which generates quite a bit of interest. As part of that I also try to raise the profile of the BAA where I can, linking to the gallery, video talks, spectra in the BAA database, section content etc which at least brings them to the BAA website. Jeremy is on Stargazers Lounge and there are a couple of others but generally I don’t often see other BAA members.
Concerning AI, it can only find the good stuff if it is out there. In Cloudy Nights there is someone building an impressive “point an click” application which can take an image full of slitless spectra taken using a Star Analyser and identify objects in it, generate fully calibrated spectra and roughly classify them. He is using AI a lot and commented that most of the queries about using the Star Analyser lead back to stuff I put out there.
Much better result showing hydrogen emission lines (and a hint of Fe lines?)
That is interesting. Unlike the spectra in the ATel and your latest spectrum, my spectrum from 20260813.103 definitely shows no net emission except for the H alpha P Cygni. (I’ve double checked everything and there is no obvious issue with the result so it looks like it has gone from emission to absorption and back to emission in a few days.
Cheers
RobinA spectrum from this morning. (ALPY 600 ~12A resolution)
https://britastro.org/specdb/data_graph.php?obs_id=21286
Quite a change from the one posted in the ATel. Except for a narrow PCygni profiled H alpha, all other lines are in net absorption currently. It is also significantly red, (the one in the ATel had been rectified)Cheers
RobinWe’ve been here before though. I was looking around for more information and started reading an article in the Times on it, everything was the same but some of the names were wrong. I then noticed the article was headed March 2008 !
The annual cost back then was £2.5m so I would say £2.8M today is pretty good cost control.
Call me a sceptic but I reckon it will suddenly be “saved” and the public will forget about it. meanwhile the arguably perhaps even more damaging cuts will be applied elsewhere in UK astronomy and particle physics. We can perhaps hope though that this might prompt a debate about Britain’s role in maintaining some credibility in science in the west given what is going on the the US
Cheers
Robinand Jodrell Bank is just the exposed tip of a large iceberg
from the BBC
“The UK will no longer participate in research at the James Clark Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, which scientists are using to image supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies.
UKRI has also cut funding for the UK’s involvement in two instruments on the Extremely Large Telescope which is being built in Chile to search for signs of life on other Earth-like worlds.”
An earlier piece also mentioned cutting Vera Rubin involvement
My Sloan photometry shows that it is currently getting redder as it fades. I assume that this is due to the current dominant H-alpha emission.
I don’t have the Sloan passbands in a digitised form to hand but H alpha emission currently accounts for approximately 40% of the flux in the Bessell R passband
EDIT: About 50% in Sloan r’
Cheers
RobinAttachments:
Spectra by me and David Boyd last night (in the BAA database)
Cheers
RobinAttachments:
The nice thing with the individual measurements (both in photometry and spectroscopy) is you can use them to make a true estimate of the stochastic uncertainty (though not any systematic errors)
A quick spectrum last night with the very low resolution ALPY200 to cover the IR, though it would be bright enough to record spectra at higher resolution particularly for observers with IR capability. Lots of IS extinction and strong H alpha and other emission lines into the IR
https://britastro.org/specdb/data_graph.php?obs_id=20943Cheers
RobinAttachments:
Hi Hugh,
It is complicated by the fact that the hot continuum spectrum of the accreting material is superimposed on the cool star spectrum but I have seen signs that the best fit cool star spectral type once the hot component continuum is removed may vary from M3III in high activity to M4III in low activity based on TiO band depths. See attached slides. (Here I was removing the cool star component to try to see the underlying spectrum of the accreting material)
Cheers
RobinAttachments:
It does shows that predictions based on the kind of spot measurements taken a year apart quoted in the latest aATel are likely to be misleading. The latest minimum in the orbital cycle is deep though. Here is Chris Peterson’s plot on Cloudy Nights which shows it very clearly
https://www.cloudynights.com/forums/topic/932002-blaze-star-t-coronae-borealis-starting-to-blow/page/15/#findComment-14658109Cheers
RobinHere is the latest “prediction”
https://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=17784
Though given it appears to be based on the same premise as Brad Schaefer’s original (failed) prediction, I don’t think will be rushing down to the bookies !Cheers
RobinJohn Graham AKA Airship on Cloudy Nights has also been following T CrB with Seestar(s) for some years. His latest data here shows a trend to low brightness currently but does not seem to show increased scatter
https://www.cloudynights.com/forums/topic/932002-blaze-star-t-coronae-borealis-starting-to-blow/page/14/#findComment-14640801Cheers
RobinA 45 degree (erecting) diagonal perhaps ? Is there any sign that there was a prism in there ? Not sure why though unless it added some needed optical length for some reason.
Cheers
RobinThat is already a very whittled down list, those that look like supernovae. The filtered tip of a very big iceberg of 800,000 alerts issued for the night of 24th Feb, set to grow by an order of magnitude once it gets up to full speed
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/get-ready-for-the-rubin-observatorys-deluge-of-discoveries
Supernovae beyond ~0.05-0.1 redshift are currently too faint for amateur spectrographs though and most of these in the list will even be beyond the professionals.London busses (340kW)
That’s quite a difference from the Flanders and Swan conversion factor (1 bus = 97HP). We are in trouble if fundamental units like this are found to change with time. Is there a theory to explain this ?
I remember making something similar to this about 20 years ago using a video camera viewfinder (a tiny Cathode ray tube)
http://www.threehillsobservatory.co.uk/astro/UC15_viewfinder.htm
to use on the scope with my long exposure modified video camera
http://www.threehillsobservatory.co.uk/astro/1004xcam1.htmWhen you compare with what you get with smart scopes these days and the cost of displays like in VR headsets for example it does seem rather expensive though. If they are popular enough, I can imagine someone undercutting them substantially.
With a core collapse type II supernova the core remains, compressed into a neutron star and the visible spectrum results from the heating of the outer layers of the star, mainly hydrogen, hence the strong Balmer lines.
I guess that still leaves though the question as to why 1c, core collapse SNe where the H and He envelope has already been stripped away, do not show strong Si II lines. This review paper though does suggest it perhaps is seen weakly in 1c spectra (fig2)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.02476Very “hand waving” but as I understand it, it is because of the difference in the mechanism. With a core collapse type II supernova the core remains, compressed into a neutron star and the visible spectrum results from the heating of the outer layers of the star, mainly hydrogen, hence the strong Balmer lines. With a type Ia, the white dwarf is completely consumed by the thermonuclear explosion resulting from the increase in pressure just prior to the impending total collapse, converting all the material into heavier elements including silicon, the Si II (and Calcium) lines showing strongly in the visible part of the spectrum.
